Book News 08/2013

As part of a government-funded study, food and drink and romance were found to be strongly "congruent" with chocolate scent, whereas other book categories were much less so, including comics and graphic novels, art, gardening, economy, management ...(Aug 1, 2013, The Guardian)

James McBride: By the Book

Are you a one-book-at-a-time person? More or less. Though at times, I will gobble anything within range. What's the best book you've read so far this year? “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” by William Shirer. All 1,100 pages, and I wish there ...(Aug 1, 2013, New York Times)

Happy birthday, Hannibal: The Silence of the Lambs turns 25

Harris's book already has enough cultural cachet not to be overshadowed by the (admittedly fine) movie adaptation. Big names in suspense, crime and horror were falling over themselves to praise the book. "A huge talent," said Rebus creator Ian Rankin ...(Aug 1, 2013, The Guardian)

Kids' books: Grimm tales teach kids to grapple with evil

Parenting is largely about hauling around massive piles of gear in a timely fashion and making sure that your kids don't run off of a cliff, or fall into a lake. But on a more profound level, it's about giving a fresh and unformed mind a worldview and ...(Aug 1, 2013, Christian Science Monitor)

Darden Business Publishing Launches New Online Platform and e-Books

Darden's case-publishing arm — the second largest in the U.S. — will also publish e-books for the first time. These new initiatives respond to rapid changes in technology and reader preferences. In 2010, the University of Virginia Darden School of ...(Aug 1, 2013, Newswise (press release))

The New Explosion in Audio Books

But in the past year, he's finished 10 books, including Dan Brown's "Inferno," Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs and George R.R. Martin's fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire." He listens to audio books in snippets throughout the day on his ...(Aug 1, 2013, Wall Street Journal)

Top 50 classic crime novels – what would make your list?

One of the literary sensations of my early teens was a thick paperback called The Book of Lists. Many were offbeat and weird and from memory, a lot had a sexual theme: “The ten most famous people to have died during sex” – that kind of thing. My ...(Aug 2, 2013, The Guardian (blog))

Overstock taunts Amazon with price war over books

Hoping to lure new customers to its site, Overstock.com has picked a fight with online retail giant Amazon.com, extending its price war on books into a second week. The Utah retailer, which got its start selling discounted closeout merchandise, wants ...(Aug 2, 2013, The Seattle Times)

The Kindle has turned me off paper books

This is a book were talking about, right? Not a suitcase. There is nothing cumbersome about most books, is there? Admittedly, they can be inconvenient – if you want to read one in the middle of the night, you have to turn on the bedside lamp, and risk ...(Aug 2, 2013, The Guardian)

JK Rowling publishes crime novel under false name

The book, about a war veteran turned private investigator called Cormoran Strike, and described by the publisher as based on Galbraith's "own experiences and those of his military colleagues", has sold 1,500 copies in hardback since it was released in ...(Aug 2, 2013, The Guardian)

Erotic fiction tops first ebook bestseller chart

She reigns supreme in the world of paper, with The Cuckoo's Calling topping hardback sales and The Casual Vacancy sitting at the top of the paperback bestseller charts, but there's no space for JK Rowling on the inaugural ebook bestseller list. Instead ...(Aug 2, 2013, The Guardian)

DOJ proposes ways to halt Apple e-book price-fixing

Following a court ruling last month that Apple conspired to fix prices of digital books, the Department of Justice on Friday proposed measures to cease Apple's illegal conduct and to prevent the computing giant from "from conspiring to thwart ...(Aug 2, 2013, CNET)

These iPad Apps Help Students Turn the Page on Book Publishing

Many parents fear that iPads and other touchscreen devices will discourage kids from picking up, reading and enjoying actual books. While this is a legitimate concern, there are many chapters to this story. In fact, there are a number of apps that ...(Aug 2, 2013, SYS-CON Media (press release))

. . . One Book Out

I've decided that books are my enemy, though they used to be my great love. They are taking over. They crowd my dining room, they double up in the bedroom, they make the attic floor sag. We even have a library in the bathroom: shelves and shelves of ...(Aug 2, 2013, New York Times)

One Book In . . .

Last year in the pages of the Book Review, Drew Gilpin Faust described her elation at finding her favorite childhood book in a rare-book store in London, after she had searched for it for decades. In the old days, devotion to such a quest would often ...(Aug 2, 2013, New York Times)

E-books: US tells Apple to cut publishing ties

A woman tries out an eBook reader app on an Apple iPad at the Leipzig Book Fair on March 15, 2012 in Germany. The US Department of Justice said Friday that tech giant Apple must cut its ties with five e-book publishers after it was found guilty of ...(Aug 2, 2013, Phys.Org)

Apple proposes new terms in e-books battle

Hours after the Department of Justice and 33 U.S. states proposed a set of remedies for Apple following its July loss in the e-books price-fixing case, the company came back with its own set of terms and called the government's proposals vague ...(Aug 2, 2013, CNET (blog))

Books to Watch Out For: August

“Falling Into Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis,” by Christine Montross (Penguin Press), out August 1st. Christine Montross, a practicing psychiatrist and professor at Brown University, presents case studies of perplexing ...(Aug 2, 2013, New Yorker (blog))

Apple battling US, states over proposed e-book limits

The government's plan, which still needs court approval, would require that Apple end its contracts with the five publishers and be banned for five years from entering contracts that would effectively the raise prices of e-books sold by rivals. The ...(Aug 2, 2013, Reuters)

Jane Austen Books: 10 Essential Reads For Janeites

By Kate Hutchings for Riffle: Did you hear? January 2013 marked the 200th anniversary of the publication of "Pride and Prejudice". For most readers this provided some brief excitement - including fresh articles written about the book, and a 12 hour ...(Aug 3, 2013, Huffington Post)

Red Or Dead by David Peace – review

Make no mistake, this book is about football. Unremittingly, uncompromisingly about football. It's what Shankly would have wanted. For Shankly, ephemera such as life, love and death could be metaphors for football, never the other way round. Football ...(Aug 3, 2013, The Guardian)

'Pilgrim's Wilderness': in Alaska, a patriarch runs amok

Tom Kizzia's new book, “Pilgrim's Wilderness,” tells the true story of a young man from high Texas society who turned into a brutal patriarch who moved his family to the Alaskan wilderness. Kizzia discusses his book Thursday, Aug. 8, at the Elliott Bay ...(Aug 3, 2013, The Seattle Times)

E-Book Case Reminds Apple Its Biggest Enemy Isn't Samsung Or Google

The fight between Apple Apple and the Department of Justice has been a story of overreaching. Rather than join publishers in settling with the government over accusations it conspired to fix the prices of e-books, Apple decided to fight in court. Of ...(Aug 3, 2013, Forbes)

The Biblioracle on physical books in an e-book world

E-books are inexorably taking over the publishing industry, at least according to the numbers. As reported by Publishers Weekly, total e-book sales increased more than 44 percent from 2011 to 2012 and now account for 20 percent of all revenue among ...(Aug 3, 2013, Chicago Tribune (blog))

Weekend picks for book lovers

What should you read this weekend? USA TODAY's picks for book lovers include a novel about a husband's devastating secret and non-fiction about the '60s hit songDancing in the Street. The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty; Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, ...(Aug 3, 2013, USA TODAY)

... to the next round, Percy/Anabeth or Magnus/Alec? You decide! Over the past two months, we've selected relationships to represent each book in our tournament, and now that they've been selected, it's time to put them against each other in the ...(Aug 3, 2013, Hypable)

On the road again

There's a Goldilocks factor in choosing a great American road trip book. You want the author, who'll be your close companion for a long journey, to be just right. Jack Kerouac, to cite one usual suspect, is incandescent but tiring. John Steinbeck is ...(Aug 3, 2013, Boston Globe)

Immigrant students in Boston write about objects that inspire them

British Museum director Neil MacGregor's “A History of the World in 100 Objects” was a wildly popular BBC radio series and book. It took 100 curators four years to decide which objects to include. Now 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing center, has ...(Aug 3, 2013, Boston Globe)

The Liberty Tree by Suzanne Harrington – review

Suzanne Harrington was an addict for 34 years. When the drugs failed, alcohol took up the baton. She married a good man, Leo, and they embarked on a folie à deux. He had a variety of jobs and so did she, but it wasn't long before she was existing on ...(Aug 4, 2013, The Guardian)

Two Rivers by Carolyn Drake – review

Out of this vast space and its vexed geopolitical history Drake has made a visually stunning book that eschews traditional documentary for an altogether more impressionistic point of view in which mystery and suggestion are as important in evoking a ...(Aug 4, 2013, The Guardian)

'The Moonstone' Is A Hidden Gem Of A Detective Novel

As a teacher of creative writing, I was dismissive of books that hinged upon plot. As a reader I was afraid that I would be disappointed this time around, that the magician's amazing powers might turn out to be a scarf hidden in a sleeve. And I knew ...(Aug 4, 2013, NPR)

There Was a Country by Chinua Achebe – review

But while he was reading classic English texts, he was also immersing himself in the traditional stories of Nigeria, which crop up in all his books. There Was a Country is in fact a lament for Biafra and the decline of Nigeria, which he relates ...(Aug 4, 2013, The Guardian)

It's not in print… but this Thief could steal a prize

Books that start life in digital form are finally breaking through to become prize contenders. And here's one for next year… Share · Tweet this. Email. Anna Baddeley · The Observer, Saturday 3 August 2013. Jump to comments (…) This year's Man Booker ...(Aug 4, 2013, The Guardian)

The slideshow above runs down those 10 cities that have written a balmy new chapter into their very thick record books. The data show the average temperature for July 2013 – computed by adding up all the highs and lows for each day of the month, and ...(Aug 4, 2013, The Weather Channel)

Philip Caputo's 6 favorite travel books

The book's first part, depicting his apprenticeship on a steamboat, vividly portrays the romance of life on the river. The latter half, written several years later, has a more elegiac tone. By then the river, no longer the main way to travel the ...(Aug 4, 2013, The Week Magazine)

Tampa: the most controversial book of the summer

Alissa Nutting's debut novel, Tampa, about a female teacher who grooms her 14-year-old pupil, has been described as "disgusting", "sickening" and the summer's most controversial book. It has even been banned in some bookshops in Australia. Written from ...(Aug 4, 2013, The Guardian)

Alice in Wonderland, the Great Gatsby and other famous books represented at ... - The Jackson Citizen Patriot

Alice in Wonderland, the Great Gatsby and other famous books represented at ...(Aug 4, 2013, MLive.com)

'A Good Birth' by Anne Drapkin Lyerly

In “A Good Birth,” author Anne Drapkin Lyerly relies on women's voices and experiences to reclaim the birthing process from the bickering jaws of the “birth wars” — that polarizing debate between midwives and obstetricians that leaves many women ...(Aug 5, 2013, Boston Globe)

What makes a publishing house great? The easy answer is the consistency with which it produces books of value over a lengthy period of time. That would include in our day, beyond the obvious candidates, houses as unalike as Oxford University Press and ...(Aug 5, 2013, New Yorker)

Delirium by Dee Shulman - review

It's fair to say that I absolutely adored Fever, the first book in this series – I remember the exact day I started it, and the exact day I finished it, and the overwhelming frustration I felt with the unanswered questions, and with the long, long wait ...(Aug 5, 2013, The Guardian)

Early in this engaging, perceptive and rigorous book, James Astill, a former correspondent for the Economist in Delhi, describes how cricket evolved as the quintessentially English game, its batsmen, bowlers and fielders a ludic representation of a ...(Aug 5, 2013, The Guardian)

Stories That Jump Off The Page: See Stunning Art Made From Books

They stalk books with X-Acto knives, tiny sandblasters, glue, paint, scissors and a shared obsession for giving new form to old things. The resulting sculptures, as pictured in the upcoming Art Made From Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved and Transformed ...(Aug 5, 2013, Co.Create)

Travel books journey into digital territory

A trend toward electronic books and the demise of bookstores — including retail giant Borders — have been part of a sea change for travel books, said Julie Neal, who produces "The Complete Guide to Walt Disney World" with her husband, Mike, from ...(Aug 5, 2013, Orlando Sentinel)

My Animals and Other Family by Clare Balding - review

Last summer was a great mix of sport, fun and…Clare Balding. For some reason, the Olympics became all about her – during the Olympics, an amazing 6866 people tweeted about Clare – the UK loved her energy, her knowledge, her warmth and above all, ...(Aug 5, 2013, The Guardian)

'Orange Is the New Black' book list: What is Piper reading?

Based on Piper Kerman's memoir of the same name, the main character, Piper Chapman, is a middle class woman who leaves behind her literate life for a stint in prison, bringing books with her for sustenance. So it makes sense that the producers have ...(Aug 5, 2013, Los Angeles Times)

Having cut my reading teeth on P.D. James, Rex Stout and Dick Francis, among others, I felt that she stuck well to the conventions of the genre, that the book had interesting characters and that she kept me guessing till the end who the murderer would ...(Aug 5, 2013, Huffington Post)